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Number 23, 1951
Artist:
Jackson Pollock
(American, 1912-1956)
Date: 1951
Medium: Enamel on canvas
Dimensions:
58 1/2 × 47 in. (148.6 × 119.4 cm)
Overall, Frame: 60 3/4 × 49 1/4 × 2 1/4 in. (154.3 × 125.1 × 5.7 cm)
Classification: Modern art
Credit Line: Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Copyright: ©The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number: 83.592
Terms
- Abstract
- anthropomorphic
- White
- Black
- Abstract Expressionist
- New York
In Collection(s)
Not on view
DescriptionThis is an enamel on unsized canvas painting with an abstracted subject. Black enamel paint was poured directly onto the canvas, creating a thicket of swirls around a central figure. The figure, a torso and head of a woman, emerges from the thicket.
Exhibition History"Jackson Pollock," Betty Parson Gallery, New York, N.Y., November 26 - December 15, 1951. (Exh. cat. no. 23).
"Jackson Pollock, 1948-1951," Studio Paul Fracchetti, Paris, France, March 7 - 31, 1952. (Exh. cat. ill. last page).
"Opening Exhibition of New Martha Jackson Gallery: Paintings and Sculpture," Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, N.Y., January - February, 1956.
"Contemporary American Painting," Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Md., 1957.
"New Images of Man," Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., September 30 - November 29, 1959; Baltimore Museum of Art, Md., 1960. (Exh. cat. no. 58)
"Selections 1934 - 1961: Selections from the Collection of Martha Jackson," Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, N.Y., February 6 - March 3, 1962. (Exh. cat. p. 19)
"Circus Arts," Museum of Contemporary Arts, Dallas, Tex., 1962.
"Black and White," The Jewish Museum, New York, N.Y., December 12, 1963 - February 5, 1964.
"Jackson Pollock," a retrospective exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., April - September, 1967. (Exh. cat. no. 23)
"Important Contemporary Paintings and Sculpture," Parke Bernet Galleries, New York, N.Y., November 13 - 18, 1970. (Exh. cat. no. 6)
"Excellence: Art from the University Community," University of California, Berkeley, Calif., November 1970 - January 1971.
"Three Hundred Years of American Art in The Chrysler Museum," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., March 1 - July 4, 1976.
"Jackson Pollock: The Black Pourings 1951-1953," Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Mass., May 6 - June 29, 1980.
"American Figure Painting: 1950-1980," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., October 16 - November 30, 1980. (Exh. cat. p. 11)
"From Veneziano to Pollock: Ten Masterworks," Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., May 18 - June 24, 1984. (Exh. cat. pp. 29-31)
"Founders and Heirs of the New York School," Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, January - August, 1997.
"Jackson Pollock in Venice," Museo Correr, Venice, Italy, March 23 - June 30, 2002.
"Action/Abstraction: Pollock, deKooning, and American Art, 1940-1976," St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri, October 19, 2008 - January 11, 2009 and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, February 13 - May 31, 2009. (Extended to June 16, 2009)
"Angels, Demons, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, and Dubuffet," The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, February 9 - May 12, 2013, and the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, July 21 - October 27, 2013.
“Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots,” Tate Liverpool, England, June 30 – October 18, 2015; Dallas Museum of Art, November 15, 2015 – March 20, 2016.
"Jackson Pollock, 1948-1951," Studio Paul Fracchetti, Paris, France, March 7 - 31, 1952. (Exh. cat. ill. last page).
"Opening Exhibition of New Martha Jackson Gallery: Paintings and Sculpture," Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, N.Y., January - February, 1956.
"Contemporary American Painting," Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Md., 1957.
"New Images of Man," Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., September 30 - November 29, 1959; Baltimore Museum of Art, Md., 1960. (Exh. cat. no. 58)
"Selections 1934 - 1961: Selections from the Collection of Martha Jackson," Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, N.Y., February 6 - March 3, 1962. (Exh. cat. p. 19)
"Circus Arts," Museum of Contemporary Arts, Dallas, Tex., 1962.
"Black and White," The Jewish Museum, New York, N.Y., December 12, 1963 - February 5, 1964.
"Jackson Pollock," a retrospective exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., April - September, 1967. (Exh. cat. no. 23)
"Important Contemporary Paintings and Sculpture," Parke Bernet Galleries, New York, N.Y., November 13 - 18, 1970. (Exh. cat. no. 6)
"Excellence: Art from the University Community," University of California, Berkeley, Calif., November 1970 - January 1971.
"Three Hundred Years of American Art in The Chrysler Museum," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., March 1 - July 4, 1976.
"Jackson Pollock: The Black Pourings 1951-1953," Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Mass., May 6 - June 29, 1980.
"American Figure Painting: 1950-1980," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., October 16 - November 30, 1980. (Exh. cat. p. 11)
"From Veneziano to Pollock: Ten Masterworks," Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., May 18 - June 24, 1984. (Exh. cat. pp. 29-31)
"Founders and Heirs of the New York School," Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, January - August, 1997.
"Jackson Pollock in Venice," Museo Correr, Venice, Italy, March 23 - June 30, 2002.
"Action/Abstraction: Pollock, deKooning, and American Art, 1940-1976," St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri, October 19, 2008 - January 11, 2009 and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, February 13 - May 31, 2009. (Extended to June 16, 2009)
"Angels, Demons, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, and Dubuffet," The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, February 9 - May 12, 2013, and the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, July 21 - October 27, 2013.
“Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots,” Tate Liverpool, England, June 30 – October 18, 2015; Dallas Museum of Art, November 15, 2015 – March 20, 2016.
Label textJackson Pollock
American, 1912–1956
Number 23, 1951, 1951
Enamel on canvas
Jackson Pollock gained international acclaim by dripping paint directly onto canvas to create immensely colorful works. In 1951, he temporarily turned away from his signature technique to make a group of exclusively black “pourings.” Here, thinned enamel paint, flung or squirted from a large basting syringe, seeped into the unprimed canvas and dried very slowly, blending and combining the artist’s gestural swirls. While some previous works had been non-representational—complete abstractions—Pollock’s black paintings often included mysterious figures from his subconscious, like the face, breasts, or hands seen here. This work, thus, shows his interest in psychology, as well as his ongoing experiments with the materials and processes of painting.
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 83.592
American, 1912–1956
Number 23, 1951, 1951
Enamel on canvas
Jackson Pollock gained international acclaim by dripping paint directly onto canvas to create immensely colorful works. In 1951, he temporarily turned away from his signature technique to make a group of exclusively black “pourings.” Here, thinned enamel paint, flung or squirted from a large basting syringe, seeped into the unprimed canvas and dried very slowly, blending and combining the artist’s gestural swirls. While some previous works had been non-representational—complete abstractions—Pollock’s black paintings often included mysterious figures from his subconscious, like the face, breasts, or hands seen here. This work, thus, shows his interest in psychology, as well as his ongoing experiments with the materials and processes of painting.
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 83.592
Published References
Introduction by Alfonso Ossorio, _Jackson Pollock_, exh. cat., Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, N.Y., 1951, 17, no. 23.
Introduction by Alfonso Ossorio, essay by Michel Tapie, _Jackson Pollock 1948-1951_, exh. cat., Studio Paul Fracchetti, Paris, France, 1952, last page.
Frank O'Hara, _Jackson Pollock_ (New York: G. Braziller, 1959), plate 61. *Listed erroneously as Number 32, 1951.
Sonya Rudikoff, "Images in Painting," _Arts_ 34 (June 1960): 40.
Francis V. O'Connor, _Jackson Pollock_, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., 1967, 61-62, 64, 115, no. 23.
Irving Sandler, _The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism_ (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), 117, fig. 8-13.
_Exhibition & Sale at the Parke-Bernet Galleries_, auction cat., New York, N.Y., November 18, 1970, Sale no. 3118, 10, no. 6.
E. Mayer, editor, _International Auction Records 1971_ (Paris: Editions Mayer, 1971), 717.
Francis V. O'Connor and Eugene Victor Thaw, _Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Drawings, and Other Works_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 153, no. 335.
Dennis R. Anderson, _Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum_, exh. cat., Norfolk, Va., 1975, 224.
Thomas Wayne Stryon, _American Figure Painting, 1950-1980_, exh. cat., The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., 1980, 11.
Francis V. O'Connor, _Jackson Pollock: The Black Pourings, 1951-1953_, exh. cat., Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Mass., 1980, 10-11, 13, 30.
E.A. Carmean, Jr., "The Church Project: Pollock's Passion Themes," _Art in America_ LXX (June 1982): 121-122.
Thomas W. Sokolowski and Thomas W. Styron, _From Veneziano to Pollock: Masterworks Donated to The Chrysler Museum by Walter P. Chrysler, Jr._, exh. cat., The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., 1984, 29-31.
David W. Steadman, "Ten Masterworks!" _Chrysler Museum Bulletin_ 14 (June 1984).
"La Chronique des Arts: Principales Acquisitions des Musées en 1984," _Gazette des Beaux-Arts Supplément_ VI Période, Tome CV, no. 1394 (March 1985): 26-75.
Frank Stella, _Working Space_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 80, fig. 27.
Ellen G. Laudau, _Jackson Pollock_ (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989), 215, 263.
Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_ (Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum, 1991), 188, no. 142.
Jürgen Harten, _Siqueiros/Pollock, Pollock/Siqueiros_, I, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany, 1995, 250.
Dore Ashton, et al., _Founders and Heirs of the New York School_, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, 1997, 103.
_Jackson Pollock in Venice: The "Irascibles" and the New York School_, exh. cat., Museo Correr, Venice, Italy, 2002, 127.
Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 204-205, no. 127.
Jeff Harrison, _Collecting with Vision: Treasures From the Chrysler Museum of Art_ (London: D. Giles Ltd., 2007), 75, fig. 85.
Edited by Norman L. Kleeblatt, _Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976_, exh. cat., The Jewish Museum, New York City, New York, 2008, 65 pl. 21 .
Klaus Ottmann and Dorothy Kosinski, "Angels, Demons, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) cat. no. 9.
Gavin Delahunty, ed., _Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots_ (London: Tate Publishing, 2015). 49, cat. no. 335.
Frank Stella, _Working Space: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1983-84_ (Frankfurt: KünstlerSelbstverlag, 2021) 108, fig. 10.
Provenance
Martha Jackson, acquired from the artist, 1954; Martha Jackson Gallery for the Estate of Martha Jackson; Parke Bernet Galleries sale, New York, Nov. 18, 1970 (lot 6); Harry W. Anderson, Atherton, Calif., 1970; M. Knoedler and Co., New York; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.; Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to The Chrysler Museum, 1983.
Catalogue EntryJackson Pollock
Cody, Wyo. 1912-1956 East Hampton, N.Y.
Number 23, 1951, 1951
Enamel on canvas, 58 1/2 × 47 in. (148.6 × 119.4 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Jackson Pollock 51
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 83.592
Reproduction © 2004 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
References: Jackson Pollock: The Black Pourings, 1951-1953, exhib. cat., Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1980, pp. 10-11, 13; Ellen G. Laudau, Jackson Pollock, New York, 1989, p. 215; Francis V. O'Connor, "(Paul) Jackson Pollock," Grove Dictionary of Art, New York, 1996, XXV, p. 166.
Between 1947 and 1950 in New York, Jackson Pollock produced the revolutionary, multicolored "pourings" that would prove to be the most famous works of his troubled and tragically brief career. (He died in an automobile accident on Long Island at the age of forty-four.) In these monumental paintings he perfected his controversial "drip" technique; positioning a canvas on the floor, he would trickle enamel paint onto it to create airy, calligraphic webs of color. This spontaneous painting method, which borrowed much from the Surrealist technique of automatism, won Pollock a leading role in New York's emerging Abstract Expressionist movement (see object 89.54). By 1951 the young artist had become the subject of numerous interviews, exhibitions, and film documentaries.
Despite his success, Pollock keenly felt the need for new aesthetic challenges. In 1951-52, after one of many dark periods struggling with alcoholism and depression, he temporarily turned away from color and pure abstraction to produce a group of exclusively black figurative paintings and drawings. As Pollock himself noted at the time, these works revived some of his earliest figure motifs:
I've had a period of drawing on canvas in black-with some of my early images coming thru-think the non-objectivists will find them disturbing-and the kids who think it simple to splash a Pollock out.
Among the most potent of these black pourings is Number 23, 1951. In it, a large, hulking figure-positioned frontally and defined by the triangular arrangement of the head and hands (or breasts?)-looms within a thicket of black paint. As Francis V. O'Connor has noted, the work echoes the figurative imagery found in a number of Pollock's paintings of the 1930s, for example Woman of c. 1930-33 (formerly Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe) and Head of c. 1938-41 (Sintra Museu de Arte Moderna, Lisbon). Several of these symbolic works were inspired by the Jungian psychotherapy Pollock was then undergoing in New York, and like them, Number 23, 1951 may well contain "an intolerable, if unconscious memory" of the artist's formidable and controlling mother (O'Connor). The painting also brings to mind the disturbing, even repellant images of women being painted at this time by Willem de Kooning.
In 1954 Pollock sold the Chrysler painting and another canvas, Number 5, 1951, to the New York art dealer Martha Jackson. In exchange, she gave him her Oldsmobile, the car in which he was killed two years later.
JCH
Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 204-205, no. 127.
Cody, Wyo. 1912-1956 East Hampton, N.Y.
Number 23, 1951, 1951
Enamel on canvas, 58 1/2 × 47 in. (148.6 × 119.4 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Jackson Pollock 51
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 83.592
Reproduction © 2004 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
References: Jackson Pollock: The Black Pourings, 1951-1953, exhib. cat., Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1980, pp. 10-11, 13; Ellen G. Laudau, Jackson Pollock, New York, 1989, p. 215; Francis V. O'Connor, "(Paul) Jackson Pollock," Grove Dictionary of Art, New York, 1996, XXV, p. 166.
Between 1947 and 1950 in New York, Jackson Pollock produced the revolutionary, multicolored "pourings" that would prove to be the most famous works of his troubled and tragically brief career. (He died in an automobile accident on Long Island at the age of forty-four.) In these monumental paintings he perfected his controversial "drip" technique; positioning a canvas on the floor, he would trickle enamel paint onto it to create airy, calligraphic webs of color. This spontaneous painting method, which borrowed much from the Surrealist technique of automatism, won Pollock a leading role in New York's emerging Abstract Expressionist movement (see object 89.54). By 1951 the young artist had become the subject of numerous interviews, exhibitions, and film documentaries.
Despite his success, Pollock keenly felt the need for new aesthetic challenges. In 1951-52, after one of many dark periods struggling with alcoholism and depression, he temporarily turned away from color and pure abstraction to produce a group of exclusively black figurative paintings and drawings. As Pollock himself noted at the time, these works revived some of his earliest figure motifs:
I've had a period of drawing on canvas in black-with some of my early images coming thru-think the non-objectivists will find them disturbing-and the kids who think it simple to splash a Pollock out.
Among the most potent of these black pourings is Number 23, 1951. In it, a large, hulking figure-positioned frontally and defined by the triangular arrangement of the head and hands (or breasts?)-looms within a thicket of black paint. As Francis V. O'Connor has noted, the work echoes the figurative imagery found in a number of Pollock's paintings of the 1930s, for example Woman of c. 1930-33 (formerly Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe) and Head of c. 1938-41 (Sintra Museu de Arte Moderna, Lisbon). Several of these symbolic works were inspired by the Jungian psychotherapy Pollock was then undergoing in New York, and like them, Number 23, 1951 may well contain "an intolerable, if unconscious memory" of the artist's formidable and controlling mother (O'Connor). The painting also brings to mind the disturbing, even repellant images of women being painted at this time by Willem de Kooning.
In 1954 Pollock sold the Chrysler painting and another canvas, Number 5, 1951, to the New York art dealer Martha Jackson. In exchange, she gave him her Oldsmobile, the car in which he was killed two years later.
JCH
Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 204-205, no. 127.